Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Eclipse 2012 - arrival in Port Douglas!

We have just arrived in Port Douglas - the place where we will (hopefully!) be seeing the total solar eclipse. We are now just 11 hours from totality and I have a million things to do, mostly dealing with setting up the hardware. We have been in the outback and rain forest for three days out of contact with the world.

I brought the telescopes along in the bus. That was a mistake. We've been bumping around on the roughest roads ever and the collimation must be way off by now; gotta check that shortly.

I'm back in a hotel room with Esben, our snoring tourleader. That doesn't matter much because I won't be sleeping tonight anyway. We have chartered a bus to pick us up here at 3.30AM to be at our designated site - south of here - at 4.00AM. I'll do a last minute weather satellite check and if there are clear indications that the chances will be better up north we will drive that way instead. I hope that won't be necessary.

Check out the latest weather outlook below. Scary!!!!

Latest outlook. Why do they show those nasty icons when only 'trace amount' of rain are expected and the cloud cover is 'only' 19-31%??????